Fifty years in Wall Street
war, and later a Brevet-Brigadier General; a graduate of Yale, and a
member of the Union League, Century, Athletic and University clubs;
Charles Johnes, the King of board room traders, once a clerk for Henry
Clews & Co., now worth a million, and a Prince of good fellows, as
bright and quick as he is popular; Louis Bell, a daring and successful
operator, a son of the well-known Isaac Bell, and who was at one time a
clerk with Brown Brothers & Co., the bankers; John Kirkner, another
plucky operator, keen in forecasting the market, and tenacious of his
opinions, whether contrary to generally accepted views or not; Eugene
Bogert, Wm. B. Wadsworth, William Henriques and James Raymond, also
successful traders; John Slayback, Edward Brandon, James Mitchell,
Vice-Chairman Alexander Henriques, ex-President J. Edward Simmons,
Secretary Geo. W. Ely, Donald Mackay, Thomas B. Musgrave, Frank Work,
the Wormsers, R. P. Flower, John T. Lester, Frank Savin, Charles
Schwartz and A. E. Bateman, are all worthy of special notice. Some of
the foregoing have a large following, more particularly the large room
traders, like Messrs. Johnes, Bell, Bogert, Kirkner and Wadsworth. There
are eleven hundred members of the Stock Exchange, and it is seldom that
a black sheep is discovered among them. There are some lambs, perhaps,
who receive a spring and fall shearing, but if they have pluck the wool
comes back again, and they push up the thorny and brambly path to
wealth, leaving, it is true, a little fleece here and there in the
struggle, but generally “getting there,” nevertheless. It is, however, a
mistake to suppose that all the members of the Stock Exchange are
wealthy. They have their ups and downs like everybody else, and some are
in very moderate circumstances.
The strain on a Wall Street broker is so great, the tension of the
nerves, in one of the most trying vocations known in the business world,
is so severe, that joking and in fact boyish pranks constitute a safety
valve for the relief of brains that would otherwise become disordered.
Without the relief of joking and skylarking, Nature’s own remedy for the
burdened mind in such circumstances—many a stock broker would go mad.
“There is nothing so good as a laugh,” says the song, and this expresses
a profounder truth than is generally suspected. Charles Darwin relaxed
the severe mental strain induced by his inquiries into occult questions
of biological science by reading the humorous extravagances of Mark
Twain, and the greatest thinkers, men who are far out on the cold
frontiers of thought, seeking, as intellectual pioneers, the solution of
the fundamental problem of existence, are proverbially jocular in their
hours of relaxation. Nature herself may be said to laugh, and why not
overburdened business men? The pranks at Christmas on the Stock
Exchange, the sound of hand organs in the Board Room, the smashing of
hats, pushing and jostling, the blowing of tin horns, the waltzes and
lanciers, the walking matches, wrestling and sparring—these are only the
natural reaction through the safety valve of humor which tend to relieve
undue tension and keep the spirits clear and fresh. There is more or
less skylarking on all dull days, and the effect is mental invigoration.
It is a mistake to suppose that only the younger men participate in
these amusements. The older members are the most incorrigible. When a
new member, for instance, is receiving his vigorous initiation and being
hustled here and there like a chip in raging waters, his silk hat
skimming along the floor, the foot ball of hundreds of feet, his collar
at right angles with his person and his coat tails flying like a Dutch
lugger under full sail, a group of older members may look on with
apparent disapproval, but the moment the newcomer is driven in their
direction he finds that his last state is worse than the first. The
veterans give him a reception that makes him look wilder and gasp more
than ever, and he is glad to escape from these gray bearded evil-doers.
The horse play is rough but it does no harm, and the new member, after
buying a new hat, is ready to “get square” on the next unfortunate wight
to be initiated.
As to the Stock Exchange as a great financial institution, none stands
higher in the world. Its transactions involve hundreds of millions in a
year, and nowhere is there more regard for strict equity in business.
Its members are as exemplary a class of business men as can be found
anywhere. Its methods are strictly upright, and a black sheep finds no
mercy. Wealth will not necessarily procure a membership in this great
financial emporium. The applicant must be a person of good repute. It
numbers men of great wealth, men of a high order of talent, men of
scholarly tastes, connoisseurs in art, students of science, literature
and philosophy, and men capable of standing at the helm and giving
direction to vast enterprises in the domain of finance and commerce.
There is not a more intelligent body of men in the world. The very
nature of their business compels them to study great public questions,
and many of the members are men of a distinctly statesmanlike caste of
mind, of whom the Stock Exchange may well be proud, while they
themselves derive no small distinction from being identified with so
illustrious and honorable a body.
WASHINGTON E. CONNOR.
Washington E. Connor was born in New York city about 37 years ago. He
first appeared in Wall Street as a clerk for Wm. Belden & Co., a firm in
which the redoubtable Jim Fisk was once a partner. Black Friday of
September, 1869, when a financial hurricane whistled through Wall
Street, brought young Connor to the front, and he has ever since
remained there. He was long the able lieutenant of Mr. Gould in large
speculations. He is a natural leader in speculation—cool, quick and
adroit. From time to time he has been a director in the Western Union,
Union Pacific, Missouri Pacific, Missouri, Kansas & Texas, Kansas
Pacific and Wabash Companies. He was president of the Central
Construction Company, which established the lines of the American Union
Telegraph Company. He was a director in the famous Credit Mobilier
Company, the Texas & Colorado Improvement Company, the Metropolitan and
New York Elevated roads and the New Jersey Southern. He is a member of
the Union League and the Lotus clubs, and especially enjoys the society
of artists, writers and other persons of talent and cultivation. He has
a good library, and is of a somewhat studious turn of mind. As a youth
he studied at the College of the City of New York.
A FUTURE FINANCIAL POWER.
George J. Gould will be one of the few very rich men in this country, as
he will, of course, be his father’s successor. He possesses good
abilities, has an attractive presence, and is modest and retiring in his
manners. He has, thus far, made an excellent record, and the Stock
Exchange was glad to admit him to membership. He is connected with all
of his father’s roads, and is gradually relieving him of much of the
onerous work connected therewith. If anything should happen to Jay
Gould, George Gould would stand in the same financial relation to his
affairs that Wm. H. Vanderbilt sustained to his father, the Commodore,
and, like him, would be found equal to the new honors and
responsibilities devolving upon him. This reasonable expectation should
dispel any apprehension of a financial shock in the event of Jay Gould’s
demise.
George Gould is bright and agreeable, and a good husband. If Jay Gould
has made enemies, that is no reason why his son should not be popular.
It is proverbial that the male descendants of a family are more akin to
the side of the mother than to that of the father, and as Mrs. Jay Gould
has always been recognized as a most exemplary wife and mother, she may
rightfully be regarded as the equal of any woman in New York, and one to
be respected and honored accordingly by those whom we ought to take as
social exemplars. There should be no other standard of social test than
that of merit; not judging individuals by what they were, but by what
they are to-day; not judging by the ridiculous test of ancestry—a
criterion which would upset some of our social demi-gods—but by the real
worth of the living man or woman. Suppose, for instance, the young
Vanderbilts, who rank high in society, and are splendid specimens of
nature’s noblemen, should be measured by the standard of the old
Commodore when he was a boatman on Staten Island. Everybody would
recognize such a test of fitness as to the last degree absurd. In the
United States nature’s nobility is at the front, as against the
parchment nobility of England and the Continent. The _personelle_ of the
English nobility makes a sorry showing beside that of young George
Gould, the young Vanderbilts, and others of our wealthy Americans.
The modern nobility spring from success in business. Peace has its
victories in the formation of character greater than those of war; and
peace and republicanism will develop the future greatness of the human
family, and not pretentious yet effete monarchies, of which mankind is
heartily sick. Many of the so-called noblemen of to-day shine only by a
faint reflected glimmer from the armor of mediæval ancestors; or their
ancestry may be much more recent, and steal slyly off in the gloom of
forgotten crimes to the prison or the gallows; or their patent of
nobility may be a thing of yesterday, a child’s bauble solemnly
displayed by addle-pated dotards, ridiculous even to the unthinking. The
English nobility is coming to the auction block. Not a few in former
times laid their heads there for treason, but now it is articles of more
value, namely, the curious, the antiquities, the bric-a-brac, the works
of art, the rare furniture, which comes to the block, and they are
purchased by the new nobility raised up by success in finance and
commerce. There is very little in Europe which is not obtainable at a
price. Titles in England may yet be sold as they have been in Italy. Who
cares for a title of Italian or French nobility? To this low estate must
English titles come at last. It is marvellous that they have endured so
many centuries after the downfall of the feudal system that originally
gave them birth.
Why is it that Gladstone has always refused a title?
One reason is that at his birth nature gave him a higher title to
nobility than parchment can ever confer.
Another is that he did not care to be ennobled and then wrapped, as a
titled mummy, in the sweet-scented cerements of political death, to be
buried in that Egyptian tomb of political extinction, the House of
Lords. And to-day he is a Colossus among statesmen, whose grand figure
will loom up in history as one of the foremost men of the nineteenth
century, a Titan dwarfing the proudest of a senile nobility. And yet he
is simply a great Commoner.
If the Irish wish to assist nature in purging Great Britain of her
bilious incumbus of nobility, they should recognize the fact that
ridicule is a good medicine. The Irish are proverbially prolific. Let
them make a point of christening the rising generation with titled
names. Then there would be myriads bearing the name of Duke O’Reilly,
Earl McCarty, Marquis O’Brien, Baron Sullivan, Sir Timothy Finnegan,
Lord McSwynny, and so on. The objection to this plan, however, is that
it would brand thousands of innocent and helpless children of worthy
parents with titles which have become contemptible to all right-thinking
persons as the badges of imbecility, mediocrity, or dishonor. This is a
rather lengthy digression after beginning with one of the natural
nobility which we have in this country, namely, the nobility founded